When Nora Allen, the daughter of Barry and Iris, showed up on their doorstep in The Flash’s season finale, there was a sense of utter surprise and, on Iris’ front, excitement at the new revelation. But as we glimpsed throughout last season, while Iris might be excited for Nora’s arrival, her daughter doesn’t necessarily feel the same.
There’s tension between mother and daughter that clearly stems from future interactions not yet known. But then there’s the fact that Nora practically worships her father while barely giving her mother the time of day.
“I think it’s something she’s going to have to contend with for awhile,” Patton told us during a roundtable interview at San Diego Comic-Con. “This idea that her and her daughter aren’t on the best of terms and watching her be so in love with her father and spend so much time with him.”
Nora’s distance from Iris will bring forth some insecurities for Iris on the mother front. Insecurities that stem from her own dysfunctional relationship with her mother. So with that knowledge in mind, Iris can’t help but second-guess the kind of mother she is in the future.
“Iris didn’t have a relationship with her mother and not a very good one,” Patton said. “I think that her knowing that her and her own daughter don’t get along feeds into this fear that maybe she’s not a great mother in the future, and maybe she’s repeating some of the same mistakes that her mother does. That’s something she’s going to have to deal with.”
Perhaps one of the more frustrating things about The Flash and how it’s treated Iris in the past is how the writers have seemed to forget about her being a journalist. Because it’s not just a hobby, it’s a defining passion that we saw the workings of in the pilot – a future newspaper article that Iris West-Allen will write during a time when everyone needs it.
While the past couple of seasons have played around with Iris as a reporter, there hasn’t been a full commitment to it. So can we expect Iris to get back to her journalist roots?
“I’ve been told we’re getting back into the journalism aspect of Iris, which I’ve always been excited about,” Patton said. “I think that’s how we know her from the comics. I think that’s one of her biggest strengths.”
But with Iris diving headfirst back into journalism, how will that affect her presence in Star Labs with Team Flash?
“I don’t think she’ll completely disappear from Team Star Labs,” Patton said. “I think she’ll still be a big, big part of that team and helping them. But she’s going to be a reporter.”
Watch our interview with Patton below, where she discusses season 7 and what’s to come.
The Flash season 5 premieres Tuesday, Oct. 9 at 8/7c on The CW.